ECHOES OF THE CATTLE TRAIL, Page #0106

down and have breakfast with us, explaining that our
breakfast was late on account of leaving Belton so early that morning to get out
where there was grazing for the cattle. He said he lived where we had camped the
night before, and when we got up the next morning he did not see his small bunch
of cattle and thought we had driven them off with our herd. He probably found
them when he returned home. We crossed the Brazos above Waco. The river was on a
rise and it was so wide that all of the cattle were in the river swimming at the
same time, and it looked as if I had no cattle at all, for all we could see was
the horns. A boat helped us get the chuck wagon across. One of the boys was
taken sick the next day, and went back home. When we reached Fort Worth, then a
small village, we bought enough supplies from York Draper to carry us through to
Dodge City, Kansas.

We crossed the Red River at Red River Station, into the Indian Territory. After
leaving this point we saw no more white people, except those with herds, until
we reached Dodge City. When we reached the Washita River it was up and hard to
cross. There I met Joel Collins of Goliad. He had just crossed and had made a
raft of three big logs tied together with ropes. I exchanged some of my ropes
for his raft and used it in ferrying my stuff across. The next day I put the
cattle to swimming the river, which had a very swift current. At first they
would not take the water, but I cut off bunches of about seventy-five to a
hundred and put them to moving Indian fashion and shoved them right off into the
water. Some of them would turn and try to come back, but the swift current had
carried them down to where the steep banks on this side kept them from coming
out, and they had to go across. I crossed the whole herd in this manner. We had
but little trouble in getting the horses across. One of the boys had a mule in
the outfit which had a pair of hopples tied around his neck, and in swimming the
mule passed near a willow limb that had